


Only Just The Start

by blackorchids



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Derek "Nursey" Nurse is Unchill, Developing Friendships, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, POV Derek "Nursey" Nurse, Post-Moving Out, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21800563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: Maybe they can be friends though. Correctly, genuinely,finally.Or, The One After Dex Moves Out
Relationships: Derek "Nursey" Nurse/William "Dex" Poindexter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 94





	Only Just The Start

**Author's Note:**

> this is kind of a weird introspection-y blah fic that I started after I read the incredibly heart-wrenching part where Dex freaks tf out and moves into the basement. I was gonna take it further and somehow have them end up dating, but I'm kinda feeling like it's not time for that yet??
> 
> Title from a _Chicago_ song, because I wanted to use The Start Of Something New from High School Musical, but I couldn't get the lyrics to work with me

So Dex moves out and it _sucks_.

The whole semester has blown, if he’s honest, though Derek rarely tries to be quite as introspective as he likes to pretend. They’d spent months walking on eggshells, Dex’s half-assed apology about his tantrum over dibs the previous summer doing little more than ensuring neither of them felt totally comfortable around one another.

The back and forth gives Derek emotional whiplash whenever he thinks about it, cannot seem to wrap his head around his ex-roommate and their sometimes-friendship. Most days, he’s sure he doesn’t want Dex to become a case of an old college schoolmate that he doesn’t see again after graduation—

—and then there are the really bad nights, where it’s been too long between hair-washes and Derek is laying on his top bunk, unsure of his ability to safely descend the stairs, only the pounding of his heartbeat to listen to now that Dex and his sleep-snuffling, born from _two_ badly reset broken noses, has ditched. Those nights, the idea of graduating and never having to deal with the whiplash that is Will Poindexter again seems downright _wonderful_.

The group chat is suspiciously off-topic, and Derek wonders how many days they’ll get before badly timed jokes start getting made. He’s hoping for at least the weekend, though he knows it’ll probably be a few months before he’s _actually_ ready to make a crack about his music or his incense or his hair-care regimen driving Dex away, like being too annoying for someone to stay isn’t one of his biggest insecurities.

Derek makes sure to leave early the following morning so that he’s not around to watch Dex gather his things and make the half-dozen trips up and down the stairs to his hovel in the basement. He gets home late, shrugging off Bitty’s badly disguised plea to sit for dinner, mutters some bullshit about having eaten only an hour earlier.

The room is cleaner than he usually leaves it, and there’s something that roils in his belly at the thought of Dex cleaning up as he leaves. Nursey’s books are all lined up on the shelves, and he can tell just by looking that his plants have been watered. The humidifier is on, and so are the non-denominational holiday lights, and the room looks cozy and warm.

But the bottom bunk is empty, just the bare mattress, and it feels like being hit in the throat with a puck.

It hadn’t been long after they moved in that Derek realized that the noises of living with another person were more than enough to get himself out of his head most of the time. With a sigh, Derek digs out his white noise machine from one of the few unpacked boxes stuffed in the closet, had consented to not using it after Dex suffered through five sleepless nights while it was on. He’d _revel_ in his ocean noises and crackling fire sounds.

His eyes drift over to the corner of the room where Dex had shoved a shoe rack. It’s gone, through he’d kindly left all six pairs of Derek’s shoes lined up neatly, heels against the baseboards. The pair Derek had been wearing that day are laying haphazardly in the center of the room, exactly where he toed off. Dex’s militant organization rules didn’t have to be followed if Dex was living in the basement.

This would be a _good thing_ , Derek thinks to himself determinedly. He knocks the wrist of his cast against his hip a few times, the dull ache familiar and comforting. After too many long minutes, he sags a little and crosses the room to get his shoes and line them up next to the others.

This would be a good thing, Derek thinks, except for how it _sucks_.

*

On Monday, he wakes up to two texts in the group chat from Ollie and Wicks about Dex having learned all he can from Nursey’s fashion sense and Dex’s admonishing _dudes_ and he bucks up and gets dressed for racist-nine-a.m. without responding himself.

He’s too strung out to be as combative as he usually is, but towards the end, he does manage to get in a few hits about how Native Americans were _not_ savages, and that it was the Europeans who had sewage in their streets until _basically, uh, ten years ago_.

His pulse is thundering in his ears as he leaves and he hopes the adrenaline turns into a productive high instead a head dive into paranoid anxiety, but he won’t know until later, so he gets a tea from the vending machine in the seating area outside his Diversifying Media seminar and slurps at it for a little while, scrolling through twitter.

Dex has retweeted a tweet bashing Mike Pence for complaining about Hamilton. Nursey narrows his eyes at it, clicking on it and following the thread, kind of impressed. Against his better judgement, he clicks on Dex’s account and stares at the little circle of his profile, his uncomfortable grin and Nursey’s floral snapback covering his fluffy red hair.

Still pinned to the top of his tweets is Nursey’s tweet about just following people of different backgrounds to expand horizons instead of making poc do all the explaining. Someone says his name and Nursey jumps, fumbling his phone, feeling guilty and caught out, and spilling some tea down his front. Luckily, the auditorium is pretty warm, so he won’t freeze.

Nursey slides into his spot next to Maia and raises his eyebrows at her turkey-printed hijab.

“Just because it’s a celebration of the genocide of millions of people and centuries of culture doesn’t mean the decor isn’t cute!” she says loudly and he gives her an uncertain look.

“I don’t know that that’s a good argument in your favor.” Jess says, sliding in on her other side and kissing her high on the cheekbone. They hold up a fist so Nursey can knock his cast against their knuckles, dark blue mitten stretched overtop.

Jess makes several good points, sweeps their pin-straight hair over their shoulder as they nail each end phrase for extra emphasis, and several of the _woke_ white students look bewildered and a little annoyed, but Dr. Jun-Li praises Jess more than once. It’s fun to take a class like this, Nursey thinks, a safe space in a way that a lot of his core classes aren’t.

He’s feeling so good after his seminar that he totally forgets that he typically gets lunch with Dex on Mondays before their shared Fem Lit class. He’s most of the way to Kotter by the time he remembers that he and Dex might not be friends any longer which means he might have to find a new lunch plan _and_ a new seat in class.

Before he’s decided whether or not he wants to keep going, he spots Dex across the courtyard at the same time Dex spots him. Continuing his life-long determination to be the world’s most awkward human being, Derek waves, feeling the shame of looking like a dumbass all the while. Dex smirks at him a little, though, and waves back, brows up, even as he comes closer.

“I’m feeling Greek today,” Dex says, aggressively normal, and Nursey loses himself for a moment in a very vivid imaginary world where he calls Dex every name under the sun for having the _caucasity_ to act like they’re still bros.

But Derek can see the tension in the set of Dex’s shoulders, the way his hands are shaking a little, pale fingertips pink from the cold, even as he finishes zipping up his backpack and swings it back around so he can two-strap it like the dweeb he secretly is. Dex is nervous about how Nursey’s going to take this, is inexpertly allowing Nursey to make the decision about whether they’ll be staying friendly.

Derek swallows, makes himself think about the fact that he is not entitled to bypass Dex’s arbitrary boundaries anymore than Dex is entitled to Derek’s own. It is, impossibly, not Dex’s fault that the two of them are incompatible as roommates.

Maybe they can be friends, though. Correctly, genuinely, _finally_.

“I don’t know that you should be assigning yourself an ethnicity like that, white boy,” Derek manages to get out, delivery shoddy. Dex rolls his eyes, but the elbow he sends to Derek’s side is too gentle to be anything but a silent thanks.

Nursey jostles him back, and crosses his fingers and _hopes_.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me about Dex being a DUMBASS on [tumblr](http://www.rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
